About This Site

My name is Graham and I'm from Canada. In 2010, I had double jaw surgery to correct my class-3 malocclusion (also know as a "severe underbite").

You can follow my day-by-day road to recovery on this blog. It took just over 90 days for my life to return to normal and the changes were well worth the trouble. If your bite has been bothering you for a while, I highly recommend this operation to correct it.

I ate a few Premium Plus crackers the other day. Question: Do you know what it’s like to be able to bite a cracker with your front teeth ahead of your bottom teeth? It’s incredible. You don’t even have to tear things apart when your teeth are where they’re supposed to be!

The one thing that I currently find extremely frustrating is the fact that, when I eat, I’m constantly chewing on my cheeks. I’ve yet to get used to this foreign mouth the doctors installed in me. I think it has an agenda of its own because it keeps trying to chew on my very own flesh. It’s not a problem though–I’ll tame it sooner or later.

I finally received my x-rays from my surgeon’s office. I’ll let the photos do the talking for me. (You can click on each picture to see it in all of its full-sized splendor.)

There you have it–a visual journey via x-rays! I never realized how crooked my bite was before the braces worked their magic. You can also clearly see the open bite on the left side of my mouth, along with the 8 titanium plates screwed into my skull, in the last photo. Phase 1 of my “Become a Terminator” project is now complete.

Want to chat live with other patients?

Recovering from jaw surgery can be lonely. That's why several of us hang
out in a live chat group where we support each other leading up to surgery
and during recovery. There are over 700 people from 50 countries chatting
right now and it's free to join.

Well it’s day 71 now and it’s been a rough week. Two weeks ago the surgeon said I had a screw loose…which everyone apparently already knew! LOL. He put me on antibiotics for 7 days, I went back to see him on Wed and we were going to wait until this Minday and have him remove it but when he was feeling around the area it really hurt and he actually felt the screw move! He decided we needed to take it out then. They gave me some freezing, which hurt and I hate needles in my mouth, and then sliced my gum. There were two screws infected and he had to scrape a lot of infected scar tissue. He had to remove all four screws and the plate. I was in more pain then I can ever remember having ( I have two children) Wednesday night and the swelling started. Thursday and Friday I was really swollen on mynleftblower side although the pain wasn’t has bad. Today the pain is back although I think the swelling has gone down some. The surgeon said if the swelling gets bigger to call right away as I’m not sure he got all the infection out. I haven’t eaten that much in the past three days so I figured I needed to make a smoothie! I see my surgeon again on Tuesday…I really need the recovery to kick in now and hopefully no more set backs. I forgot to ask why or how the screws got infected, that will be a question for Tuesday.

Terry, I’m glad your surgeon was able to clean out the infection and set you back on a proper recovery path. It’s frustrating that you experienced this setback, but you’ll still be able to put this behind you soon! =)

Graham, I am so happy that I stumbled across your blog. The process has only started for me (just finished the nasty molds for braces) and to be honest, saying I am scared is quite the understatement. I am not having the same surgery as you, I have double jaw surgery to fix an open bite but the recovery sounds the same or very similar. You are a huge inspiration to me! My family told me to blog the experience and I have felt sort of embarrassed about the entire ordeal but you gave me a lighter side to it, maybe it will help. I flagged your blog as a fav and plan to look back to it though out my entire process. You managed to stay smiling through everything and it was neat to hear your inner thoughts AS the recovery was taking place. Thank you a million times over for writing it!

Hi Graham, I have a class 3 occlusion as well and I’m scheduled to have double jaw surgery sometime this winter. I stumbled across your blog while looking up information on the surgery. What you went through sounds terrifying, but at the same time it’s kind of reassuring to have a detailed description of what I’m in for. This blog will help a lot!
P.S. I never thought about what it’s like to bite into something like a normal person… It must feel amazing!

“Over the past several years, I’ve done my best to respond to every comment on this blog, but unfortunately I no longer have the time to do so. If you have questions about jaw surgery and want to connect with others on this journey, please join the live chat group. Don't worry — it's free!”